Ugh, why is this news? (Score 3, Insightful)

It's another medium-sized study, billed as "gold standard" but it isn't (because it's not double-blinded...so maybe it's silver standard?), finding the same results that have been found before (no substantial effect on serious cases) including with actual gold-standard studies, and not providing any more information about death because yet again it's underpowered to do that. (With regards to death, their data is consistent with everything from ivermectin lowering your risk of death 11x, to raising your risk of death 10%. THANK YOU for these mile-wide error bars...how does this help us understand anything, again?!) And, given all that, the lead author has the temerity (in the interview, not the paper) to suggest that this replication of the results of previous studies on ivermectin should "close the door" on its use! No--either the door was already closed because if it doesn't work on serious cases (which we already knew) it's not worth taking, or it's still open because we haven't ruled it in or out as being helpful against deaths! (The UPI article also reports the ICU numbers which are too small to actually be significant, but not the death numbers, also too small to be significant...but the ICU gap is much smaller. Nice way to spin the narrative, UPI! How about you just *don't report on results with numbers too small to be significant*, hm? How are we supposed to take science reporting seriously when we're picking and choosing which noise-dominated values get announced without context to show how noisy they are, and which aren't?) As an addition to the literature, sure, it's nice to have. Replication is good. Helps us make sure we haven't made a mistake. But it doesn't move the needle anywhere. It shows again what was already shown, and isn't big enough to rule out (or in) the remaining question.